{"id":34170,"date":"2016-01-23T02:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T07:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34170"},"modified":"2016-01-22T15:47:08","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T20:47:08","slug":"scott-adams-theory-about-donald-trump-is-looking-better-all-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/01\/23\/scott-adams-theory-about-donald-trump-is-looking-better-all-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Adams’ theory about Donald Trump is looking better all the time"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the American Enterprise Institute<\/em> blog, James Pethokoukis<\/a> is starting to believe that Scott Adams has had Trump’s number this whole time:<\/p>\n

Maybe all those explanations are necessary to fully understand the Trump phenomenon. But they may not be sufficient without one more, one that is both simple and sophisticated. The simple part: Trump is just a really, really good salesman. Or, as the campaign pros put it, a \u201cpolitical athlete.\u201d The sophisticated part is how Trump is making that sale to voters. Consider the possibility that Trump \u2014 a billionaire businessman with an Ivy League MBA and a best-selling author on dealmaking \u2014 isn\u2019t some blithering idiot blurting out populist nonsense. Instead, perhaps Trump is calculatedly using tried-and-true influencing and negotiating techniques \u2014 ones used by persuaders from carnival hypnotists to high-profile motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins \u2014 to literally mesmerize the GOP.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

These and other of Trump\u2019s \u201cmaster persuader\u201d tricks and techniques \u2014 including engineered insults like calling Jeb Bush \u201clow energy\u201d \u2014 have been outlined and explained since last summer in a series of prescient blog posts by cartoonist Scott Adams. Best known as creator of the Dilbert<\/em> comic strip, Adams is also a Berkeley MBA and trained hypnotist. While many analysts dismiss Trump as an idiot clown benefiting from America\u2019s anxious id, Adams sees Trump as a savvy communicator \u201chighly trained in the art of persuasion [who] literally wrote the book on it \u2026There is a reason Trump\u2019s message penetrates the crowd noise\u201d while the other candidates flounder.<\/p>\n

Adams too points out that Trump is friends with Robbins, someone deeply studied in the art of persuasion and making emotional connections, including hypnotic techniques. Also keep in mind that while Adams may not be a member of the national pundit corp, he has been dead on in forecasting the seemingly inexorable rise of Trump, including Trump\u2019s emerging acceptance from the GOP establishment.<\/p>\n

Of course, maybe Adams is giving Trump more credit here than he deserves. Maybe Trump is just, as Adams puts it, a \u201clucky Hitler.\u201d The wrong man at the right time to gain power. But if Adams is right, Trump is intentionally playing a different game than his rivals are, with their tired 30-second ads and think-tank approved policy agendas. And he\u2019s winning that game by a landslide right now \u2014 which, by the way, is what Adams is predicting for November 2016.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the American Enterprise Institute blog, James Pethokoukis is starting to believe that Scott Adams has had Trump’s number this whole time: Maybe all those explanations are necessary to fully understand the Trump phenomenon. But they may not be sufficient without one more, one that is both simple and sophisticated. The simple part: Trump is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,13],"tags":[551,1037,188,517],"class_list":["post-34170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-dilbert","tag-donaldtrump","tag-electionwatch","tag-republican"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8T8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34171,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34170\/revisions\/34171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}